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Brian Lehrer has proved to be as ill-informed as the rest of the media herd with his obsessive compulsive fixation on the rise and fall of the DOW. Brian needs to get a grip and stop acting irrationally like his colleagues on cable.

everybody knows the stockmarket is a scam, right?!

I watch the major indexes, but I’m afraid I do it to gloat. I had my all my retirement savings in an S&P index fund until September of 2007. After loosing about $10K I moved it all to a government bond fund, and actually made a little money since last year.

The problem with ignoring DOW reports is the same with ignoring election polling. I try not to pay attention but the news media keeps telling me what is happening. After a while it's hard to ignore.

Andrea what do we have control over? Are you saying that life savings is something they have no control over?

definitely paying more attention to both the DOW and my Simple IRA Mutual Fund. i think the DOW is the best indicator for me because my mutual fund has alot of Large CAP. That said i'm not chronic i'll go days without looking at it and i'm in for the long haul. also, hopeful wall street will get there act together and work this out.

The watching of the DOW during the Depression/Recession and the Polls during the election is because of the reified society we live in. Graphics and visual information, a key part of the current information war, is constantly over-taking people obtaining real information. It's a way to feel informed but not really knowing what is going on beyond the visuals. But on a different note, the current state of affairs has put my mood down. Though I never watch the DOW, others I know must be doing so because their moods are down and that affects my mood.

Right guy, but don't you know that lots of people started investing on a small scale over the past decade and are watching their retirements, saving, money dwindle. They (banks) suckered us into believing it was the thing to do with savings and now when we see it is the small investor not the titans of wall st that have been left out in the cold...so they get worried. Isn't reading NY magazine an equal waste of time? Great Andrea laff it off

I am a chronic DOW watcher. I keep Yahoo! Finance open and refresh frequently. The reason I watch it is because I will be putting a large sum of money down on a home in the next couple of weeks. I am on the edge of my seat following the value of these dollars I'm going to be taking out of the market... when's the right time?

I read somewhere that a good economic indicator is aquarium sales...first-time homeowners often show their newfound housepride by investing in an aquarium. When home sales fall, so do first-time aquarium purchases. Do your experts see this?

Thanks for the article.
Its sounds to me like the wealth of our nation has been stretched so far that its going to snap like a rubber band and hit us all in the face.